


Naked Singularity

by TengoAvary



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gallifrey, Gen, Time Lords and Ladies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 02:36:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15876726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TengoAvary/pseuds/TengoAvary
Summary: In the years before the Doctor flees Gallifrey, his granddaughter Susan joins the Prydonian Academy, there to be initiated into the proudest and most powerful civilisation in the universe. Meanwhile the Doctor and an untrustworthy friend find a way back to the Time Lord dark ages -- an era thought to have been wiped from history -- and discover secrets that the Time Lords themselves forgot they ever knew...





	Naked Singularity

It was traditional for new members of the Prydonian Academy to be kept waiting. In a short while they would be initiated into the Academy, and assigned their first TARDIS. They would be able to move freely through both the spatial and temporal extent of the Citadel; they would never have to wait for anything ever again. So it was only proper that they should be made to wait now.

Her classmates called her Jhandra, which was short for one of her thirty-seven names. She didn’t like being called Jhandra, it didn’t suit her and it sounded strangely formal, but she was too intimidated to ask them to call her anything else. As she stood before the towering doors of the Prydonian Academy she found herself wishing desperately that she was back at home, where her friends had called her Santi, and her family had called her Susan.

Everyone was nervous, standing in front of those doors, and everyone was too nervous to admit that they were nervous. They were famous doors — the only part of the Prydonian Academy that was still visible from the exterior. These days every quartic jhot of spacetime within the walls of the Citadel had been filled by at least seven different dimensionally transcendental structures, overlapping each other in ways that hurt Susan’s eyes to look at. But the space immediately in front of the doors had been kept clear, and it said a lot about the power and influence of the Prydonian chapter that they could afford to keep a space so cavernous and imposing actually empty in the heart of the Citadel of the Time Lords.

The nineteen initiates cowered before the doors, whispering to each other occasionally but most of them quietly reflecting on their imminent doom. Those doors had a way of signifying imminent doom. The black, aged wood adorned only with the Prydonian seal seemed to say silently “you do not belong here — turn back now — crawl back into the hole you came from.”

Only a quarter of candidates made it this far; only the best of the best. But Susan knew that making it this far meant there was that much further to fall. It was all or nothing. You passed or you failed. You became a god or you went back to being nobody, memory wiped and all qualifications voided.

And then the doors were swinging on their hinges, reaching outwards like welcoming arms. A Time Lord in full ceremonial dress, silhouetted in dim green light, was walking towards them.

“Initiates”, he called. “Welcome.” The massive doors were still turning, creaking on their ancient hinges, when the Time Lord reached the initiates. He was old, but Susan supposed that all Time Lords were old — some just looked old.

“I am Borusa,” the Time Lord spoke softly, somehow his voice filling all the space above and around them. Susan bowed her head along with the rest of the initiates. Borusa was the Director of the Academy, a distinguished and powerful Time Lord, feared and respected by all who knew his name. But Susan was surprised by the calmness she felt in the old man’s presence. As soon as he had approached, the fluttering in her stomach subsided, and her thoughts grew clearer. She realised it was his mind, reaching out to touch the minds of all the initiates, his way of greeting them. The touch of a powerful mind’s telepathy, gently skimming through their thoughts as one might leaf through a new book.

He spoke again, his voice slow and controlled. “Today you enter the Prydonian Academy; but make no mistake, you are not Prydonians yet. For some of you, we will meet just this once. The rest of you I will meet again on the day of your ascendence. The day that you become Time Lords.” He looked at each of them in turn, gracing them with a small smile. Then he turned swiftly on his heel, and gestured for them to follow. Nineteen initiates and one Time Lord passed into the Academy of Prydonia, the doors slamming closed behind them.

***

“Most Time Lords, ironically, have very little time.”

Their professor stood at the front of the hall, his hands linked behind his back. His hair was short, and greying, but his eyebrows were still black and powerful.

“Therefore I do not intend to waste any time actually teaching you. You are students of the Prydonian Academy. You have already proven that you can think for yourself. The best learning is through practice. Knowledge grows from one’s own mistakes.”

He gestured at the three tall cylinders standing in a row beside him. Susan felt a thrill of excitement.

“These are your TARDISes. It takes six to pilot a TARDIS, and so the nineteen of you will form three groups of six, and if any one of you tells me that this is mathematically impossible I will send you immediately back to the drylands.”

The professor looked sternly at them, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Your first lecture occurred exactly two hundred and eighty years ago, in this very room,” he said. “When I have a spare moment, I will meet you there.”

He gave them a small bow, and turned to leave. After about two and a half steps he stopped, looking thoughtful.

“You should already know this, but it would perhaps be prudent to remind you…” He turned back to his students. “The Citadel of the Time Lords is safe. Paradoxes are impossible. You could go back in time and accidently kill your grandfather and walk away with only a minor headache. You have been given your own TARDISes not because we trust you, but because you cannot conceivably do any real damage. These TARDISes have been programmed to strictly stay within the limits of the Citadel. You cannot leave, so do not try. Nevertheless…” He paused, and for a moment his gaze lingered on Susan. “Nevertheless misuse of time travel can get very… confusing. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He clapped his hands together. “Well, off you go then! What are you waiting for?” He strode out of the room.

The initiates had a silent conversation, consisting of surprised glances and thoughtful noises. None of them knew each other very well yet. They had all been taken from different parts of Gallifrey, except the twins Raphlo and Kerul. They stood as far apart from one another as possible to indicate that they would both rather go home now than share a TARDIS.

Susan looked from one initiate to the other, feeling like a rather violent spacetime disturbance had just manifested in the pit of her stomach.

***

The professor strolled along a dark corridor, lit with unnecessarily creepy green phosphorescence. At the end of the corridor was a small door which opened as he approached and shut silently behind him. A warm glow greeted him, simulated candlelight. He had been offered a larger office when he had first taken up a teaching position, but had politely declined. There was something cosy about his old office; it was small and quaint and homely. What would he do with all the extra space, anyway?

He settled into an armchair and pulled a screen towards him. He had been working on a research problem for several days now, which was an unusually long time for him.

He usually got bored long before that and moved on to something else. 

The problem concerned self-intersecting worldlines, i.e. what happened if an object, or a person, encountered their past- or future-selves. There were a lot of safety measures in place in the Citadel to prevent this from ever actually happening. Meeting your past- or future-self was usually fine if you knew what you were doing, but it did have the potential to rip open a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum, which was considered inadvisable. The professor was trying to understand the precise mechanism behind this catastrophic process. Even now it remained a poorly understood phenomenon due to the (perhaps understandable) reluctance of most Time Lords to study it in any detail.

The professor peered at his screen, trying to interpret the results of his latest simulation. 

There was a knock at his door. He blinked, sighed.

“Come in.”

The door slid open, and in strode a man with a youthful face and body. Bright blue eyes glinted in the simulated candlelight as he nodded towards the professor.

The professor scowled at him.

“So,” said the newcomer, settling into an armchair opposite the professor. “Looks like I’m going to be teaching Chaos and Epicausation this semester. Didn’t you use to teach that? Perhaps we can compare notes.”

The professor tried very hard to keep his jaw from dropping.

“You got the position?”

The newcomer smiled pleasantly.

“Yes, I was rather surprised myself. I think Ravelia was the favoured candidate, but apparently she’s going to be taking some time off for stress.” He scratched at his neatly trimmed beard. “Stress, psychological trauma, something like that…”

The professor put his screen down on the table. He leaned back into his armchair.

“And they didn’t ask you about your… absences?”

“Interestingly enough, the committee seemed determined to avoid any mention of the subject.”

The professor frowned at the newcomer. “And who are you blackmailing this time?”

The other chuckled heartily. “Why, my old friend, you wound me.” He leaned forwards. “You’ve met the initiates already, I gather.”

“Briefly.”

“Ah, wonderful, wonderful. I’m very excited to meet them myself. The next generation of Time Lords! Marvelous, isn’t it?”

His eyes were wide and too many of his teeth were showing.

“This is going somewhere, I assume?” the professor growled.

“One of the students is from Lungbarrow, did you hear? That’s your neck of the woods isn’t it?”

The professor stiffened.

“Oh really?”

“Yes, funny business actually. It seems that the official records were a little confused on the subject; I had to do a bit of digging to uncover the truth. But she’s definitely from Lungbarrow, this… oh what was her name… Jhandranema Phylexia something something…”

“Who have you told?”

“Oh, I haven’t told anyone yet, my old friend. I thought it prudent to keep quiet. Can you imagine the scandal if they found out your granddaughter is an initiate to the Prydonian Academy?”

***

They were all quite annoyed at being in the group of seven, since it meant that one of them would to stand by and watch as the other six piloted one of the most powerful machines in the universe.

“Maybe we can take turns?” Susan suggested.

“Good idea Jhandra,” said Raphlo. “You can sit out first.” He took his position at one of the sides of the hexagonal control panel, and surveyed the controls hungrily.

They had discussed several different methods for dividing themselves into three groups — Hepla had suggested picking three team captains who would then take turns picking teammates . This motion had been wholeheartedly rejected by the rest of the initiates, who had very bad memories from their schooldays and couldn’t possibly bear the thought of being the one left at the end. Ultimately they had resorted to a random number generator; they told the computer to give them a random number between 0 and 46558511, which Raphlo insisted made perfect sense since there were exactly 46558512 ways of sorting nineteen initiates into two groups of six and one group of seven.

The computer had given them the number 8823600, and they had then spent over an hour arguing about what that meant.

Wasting time is absolutely fine when you have a time machine.

The six pilots stood around the control panel, preparing the ship for dematerialisation.

“There’s something not quite right about these controls,” Genji said.

“Hmm,” said Raphlo, examining a small monitor on his panel. “This is a Type 40, it’s an old model.”

“A Type 40?” Genji said, raising an eyebrow. “I studied the Type 75 interface, I can’t pilot this.”

“What’s that professor playing at?” said Hepla indignantly. “This isn’t fair!”

“Well he did say the best learning is through practice…” Susan said quietly, because she had anticipated that no one would listen to her anyway.

“Well I think I’ve programmed in the right date,” Raphlo said. “Now we just need to figure out how to disengage the dampers. Any ideas anyone?”

There was a collective shrug.

“Well I’m almost certain this is the dematerialiser…” Hepla said, sounding almost anything but certain.

Susan peered over her shoulder.

“I think so, yes.”

Raphlo abandoned his panel and stood next to Hepla.

“This should be simple, shouldn’t it?”

Susan gazed longingly at the unoccupied panel Raphlo had left behind.

“My teacher warned me piloting a real TARDIS would be nothing like the flight simulators,” said Ialon helpfully. “Although she never explained why exactly.”

“Aren’t these the dampers?” asked Susan, running her fingers along a row of six switches. She felt the warm eplastic of the control panel humming, trembling beneath her fingertips. And then a strange presence at the edge of her mind, almost like Lord Borusa’s telepathy, but… but more playful somehow, like mischievous words in her ear that she couldn’t quite make out.

She giggled suddenly.

Raphlo turned to look at her.

“What? Huh? No, those aren’t the dampers, hang on…”

Susan didn’t even care, she really wanted to flick those switches.

“Wait, what are you doing? Jhandra, no!”

***

“What do you want from me?” the professor growled.

The other laughed.

“First of all, Doctor, I would like you to hear me out. I’ve had an idea.”

The Doctor shifted in his seat nervously. He had learned to get very worried whenever this man had “an idea”.

“Go on.”

The man sitting opposite him leaned forward, and steepled his fingers.

“I’ve found a way into the Occluded Zone.”

There was silence for a long time, while the Doctor stared at his old friend and tried to calculate the likelihood that he was lying.

In the end he simply said: “That’s impossible.” In fact he had long suspected that it wasn’t impossible, just very very difficult.

“Let’s assume it is possible,” his friend said.

“You’ve done it already? You’ve actually been there?”

“No,” the other admitted. “I want you with me, Doctor. I want to share this with you; I want to see the look on your face when we pass through the Occlusion and out the other side, when all the ancient secrets of the Time Lords are ours for the taking!”

The Doctor let out a long breath.

“And you need my help.”

“And I need your help.”

“Is it dangerous? Wait, of course it is. All of your ideas are dangerous.”

The other man laughed. 

“We can do it, you and I. Our combined intellect is unsurpassed, in all the history of the Time Lords. You know it’s true, Doctor. You know what we could achieve.”

The Doctor stared at him. The ancient secrets; all the lost knowledge of the Time Lords. Willfully lost, some say... Knowledge too dangerous for any Time Lord to wield.

“No,” the Doctor said.

“You’re tempted, Doctor, I can see it in your eyes.”

“No,” he said again.

“If you weren’t tempted, then of course nothing I could do would change your mind. But you are. You just need a little push, just a nudge over the edge. If you don’t help me, Doctor, I will tell the Council that you somehow tricked the system into accepting your granddaughter into the Prydonian Academy. They might not understand me at first, because Time Lords don’t have family, do they? But when they realise the taboo that you have broken, Doctor, I suspect that they will banish you, force you to regenerate and then wipe your memory. If they are in a forgiving mood, that is.”

The Doctor was trembling. The Occluded Zone… They had spoken of it often, fantasised about finding some hidden gateway, some lost passage into the depths of Time Lord history, finding a way through the Occlusion. Bringing back the lost knowledge, restoring the Time Lords to the greatness that they should never have forsaken…

“Show me what you have found,” the Doctor whispered.

His old friend leaned back into his chair, smirking.

“If you insist, Doctor,” he chuckled. “And one other thing, my old friend. From now on, you will call me Master.”

***

There was an echoing thud that trembled through the floors of the control room. Susan’s heart was in her throat. The other six initiates were staring at her in horror.

Cloister bells were ringing, somewhere far away.

“Where are we?” Ialon whispered.

Raphlo glanced at a screen with wide eyes. “According to this, we’re nowhere.”

“That’s impossible,” Genji said. “The professor said these TARDISes couldn’t leave the citadel.”

“What did you do, Jhandra?”

Susan just shook her head. She couldn’t speak, could barely move. She was going to be expelled for this, she knew it. Whatever she had managed to do, it couldn’t be good.

Ialon flipped on the scanner, and all seven of them glanced upward.

“That’s definitely a corridor,” Timu said.

“So we’re definitely somewhere,” Genji said, the relief in his voice almost palpable.

“Can we just try again?” Ialon said. “Maybe we can just take off and go where we were supposed to go.”

“I’m not touching those controls again,” Timu said nervously. “You all felt it, didn’t you? Something’s wrong, really wrong.”

The cloister bells were still ringing, louder now.

“Let’s look outside,” Susan said, before she was aware of what she was saying.

“Are you serious?” Raphlo said. “It could be dangerous!”

“We could be in the right place,” Hepla said reasonably. “Maybe we flew the TARDIS correctly, maybe the sensors are just broken.”

“That could be why the cloisters are ringing,” Ialon said.

Raphlo shrugged. “Well I’m staying here.”

Hepla stepped back to the console and flipped the door control switch.

A gentle buzz while the doors moved on their hinges.

“Come on,” Susan said, finally feeling the strength returning to her legs. “Let’s have a look.”

One by one they filed out of the doors. The corridor they had landed in was dark, lit by a fiery orange glow from the far end.

“What’s down there?”

“I think we should go back.”

“Can anyone else hear that?”

Susan crept onwards, her feet tapping against the metal walkway below. At the end of the corridor the walkway carried on, past the walls, into a wide, impossibly wide hall.

“Where the hell are we?” she heard Genji gasp behind her.

The walkway disappeared into the distance ahead of them; you couldn’t see the end, it just went on and on, forever and ever. Below them and to both sides was a chasm, a black and empty void. And above…

It was impossible to judge the distance, impossible to guess its size. It hurt the eyes to look at, it hurt the mind and the soul. A big spherical something wreathed in fire, burning and yet not burning, moving and yet stationary, timeless and yet eternal.

A collapsing star, frozen in time, re-living its death over and over again. At the centre of the halo, unreachable, unseeable, a singularity, pulling everything else in, matter, light, space and time. A black hole being born before their eyes.

Susan gripped the metal handrail, her palms sweaty but cold. She couldn’t blink, couldn’t take her eyes off it.

Somewhere in her mind she could hear a voice.

“Hello, Susan,” it said.


End file.
